Eggs are healthy after all

By WC Douglass MD

Sounds like someone in Washington has egg on his face. The feds have just completed one of the longest, slowest turnarounds in the history of their mistaken food guidelines.

Oops! Turns out eggs aren't so bad for you after all. That's right! You can even eat the yolks now. (Of course, if you've been listening to me, you never stopped eating them in the first place.)

This isn't the first time U.S. government food advice has been badly wrong, and you can bet the farm it won't be the last.

The change of heart was supposedly based on a new survey that shows eggs now contain 14 percent less cholesterol and 64 percent more vitamin D than found in a similar study conducted in 2002.

Give me a break. Those surveys used eggs from just 12 places around the country. It's such a minor sample that it's bound to differ each time it's run -- and, let's face it, 14 percent isn't exactly a major drop.

It's hardly a study worthy of changing guidelines over -- which should give you a clue about what's really going on here.

You're a first-hand witness to the USDA going into C-Y-A mode. They've finally realized what I've been telling you for years: eggs have virtually no impact on blood cholesterol levels.

Even if you're worried about cholesterol (and you shouldn't be -- but that's another story), cutting out eggs won't make a difference.

Repeated studies have shown that two eggs a day have no impact on blood cholesterol levels, even in people who already have elevated cholesterol.

So whether you like yours fried, boiled, sunny side up, over easy, undercooked or not cooked at all, there's no egg-scuses -- eat your eggs, and eat them often.

Just be sure you get yours fresh from the farm, or at least organic -- because eggs HAVE changed in recent years, just not in the ways the USDA will ever admit.

Factory farms give their chickens worthless feed instead of the grass, bugs, and worms they need to produce good-quality, nutrient-dense eggs.

Hens fed naturally, on the other hand, produce eggs with more omega-3 fatty acids, beta-carotene and vitamins A, D and E.

You might have to shell out more for fresh and organic eggs -- but they're worth the extra scratch.